Residential electric load represents approximately 39% of the overall United States electric system consumption.
Intermittent residential electric usage often requires power pools to run less efficient power plants at a higher cost to the consumer during peak periods. Peaking power plants typically emit 30% more pollutants than base load power plants.
Current battery technology and energy storage is often more expensive than the cost to run peaking power plants. Current battery technology connected to intermittent residential load through a load shift system can be more cost effective than peaking power plants.
Conventional commercial and residential heating and power systems operate separately from one another and together are only around 51% efficient. A typical commercial natural gas combustion turbine combined heat and power (CHP) system operates at 75% efficiency. However, there are no residential CHP systems in the market.
Commercial and residential heating systems are typically fossil fuel fired and located at the end users property to produce heat for a building. Natural gas utilities and oil companies deliver fossil fuels to the end users at their property to heat their buildings.
Electric power plants are large and centrally located and fueled by fossil fuels, hydro, wind and nuclear materials to generate electric energy. Electric energy is then delivered to end users over a network of transmission and distribution cables by a regulated electric utility company.
Combined heat and power systems provide both heat and electric energy and are located at the end users property. Typically a commercial sized onsite natural gas generator produces electric energy and the waste heat from the onsite generator heats the building.
Thermo electric generators (TEG's) produce electric energy through a differential in temperature using what is known as the Seebeck effect. TEGS's come in many different sizes and are manufactured by many. By applying heat on one side of the TEG and cold on the other side the solid state device produces electric energy. Typical hot side operating temperatures are 270-500 C and cold side is 30 C.
A typical natural gas fired utility scale generator with a heat rate of 8000 BTU/kwh is 42% efficient. However, TEG's are inefficient and are typically only 5-8% efficient. Therefore, TEG's are only being deployed in commercial applications today in remote locations when combustion engine generators are not practical, TEG's are currently not used in residential applications due to inefficiencies and cheaper regulated electric energy rates.